Do not run WDIDLE3 /D on the new Western Digital EZRX drives


Recommended Posts

I've ran WDIDLE3 on all my Western Digital green drives to stop the excessive LLC count, around 30 drives up to this point. I recently installed 4x WD30EZRX drives (The SATA3 version, the older EZRS SATA2 versions work fine with WDIDLE3). Anyway, I precleared all 4 and had no SMART errors, put one in parity and 3 into data slots. Couple weeks later I realized I forgot to run WDIDLE3 on them, so I restarted my unRAID and disabled the idle3 features like I always do.

 

Starting the array back up, everything seemed slow. A good 5 seconds to populate any and every directory (even ~5 file directories). I knew something was up, tried transferring to my server at a staggering 9MB/s. I went to my server and it was making strange high pitch noises, definitely coming from the hard drive area. A sound i've never heard a hard drive make before, and i've seen hundreds of dying hard drives. I panicked and went to the GUI to check for errors, but none were found. No SMART errors, or anything of the sort.

 

So I figured the only thing it could be was WDIDLE3 (which makes no sense to me, how could disabling that feature affect the drive in that way?). I re-ran it with the /S300 command (5 minute) instead of disabling the feature completely. Restarted server and I can now transfer at 32MB/s, no more noises from my parity drive, everything is working as normal.

 

So... word of warning If you have a WD--EZRX drive and tend to run WDIDLE3 to reduce LLC counts - Run it with /S300 and not /D!

Link to comment

I'm curious what caused you to want to run WDIDLE in the first place.  Have you read any reports of these drives racking up excessive LCCs over short periods of time?  A quick google search didn't show me anything of interest.  I know the EARS drives had this problem, but I wouldn't assume that the EZRX drives do as well without seeing some proof.

Link to comment

I'm curious what caused you to want to run WDIDLE in the first place.  Have you read any reports of these drives racking up excessive LCCs over short periods of time?  A quick google search didn't show me anything of interest.  I know the EARS drives had this problem, but I wouldn't assume that the EZRX drives do as well without seeing some proof.

 

My EZRS drives had the problem, which is just a SATA2 version of the EZRX (from what I gather). I have over 10 EADS and 10 EARS, all had the problem. Infact before I knew about this, many of my older drives had 100,000+ LLCs within the first 2 weeks of using them in unRAID. They were brand new when I put them in.

 

I couldn't find anything about the issue being fixed on the EZRX, so I ran it - because to my knowledge it was just a SATA3 version of the EZRS. Never would I imagine that it would cause the above issues. I know from past experiences my EADS/EARS would get thousands of LLCs in a a couple hours, and then get 0 for a few days, then get thousands in a couple hours again. Completely random, and it took me forever to discover WDIDLE3. I didn't want to risk it with the brand new 3TB drives, and then one day see that they have 100k+ LLCS like my older drives.

 

I will say this - after a few weeks my LLCs on the EZRX were still under 50. So they seemed to have fixed it, but I've had past 'green' drives sit there at <50 LLCs for days before skyrocketing to 50,000+ LLCs over a single day. I'd rather be safe than sorry.

Link to comment

I see.  I would still like to see someone test the EZRX drives without running WDIDLE on them to see if they have the LCC problem.  I'm glad you aren't having any issues with your new drives, but there's no way to know if the drives would have been fine without the firmware modification unless someone tries it.  An expensive and risky test, I know, but it must be done...FOR SCIENCE!

 

I would run the tests myself, but my R&D money is constantly tied up in budget board testing...

  • Like 1
Link to comment

Couldnt help but notice this thread as I have all WD drives currently.

EARX's

EARS's

EADS's

faex - parity

 

 

Should I be running wdidle on these? is that the recommened practice?

What kind of LCC should I be seeing per power on hours roughly?

 

small sample

 

eads

9 Power_On_Hours          0x0032  076  076  000    Old_age  Always      -      18092

193 Load_Cycle_Count        0x0032  189  189  000    Old_age  Always      -      34107

 

ears

193 Load_Cycle_Count        0x0032  199  199  000    Old_age  Always      -      5222

9 Power_On_Hours          0x0032  096  096  000    Old_age  Always      -      3158

 

earx

193 Load_Cycle_Count        0x0032  199  199  000    Old_age  Always      -      4205

9 Power_On_Hours          0x0032  099  099  000    Old_age  Always      -      1162

 

 

faex

193 Load_Cycle_Count        0x0032  200  200  000    Old_age  Always      -      179

9 Power_On_Hours          0x0032  099  099  000    Old_age  Always      -      1163

 

wow parity is low, thats cause its not a green drive and doesnt suffer this issue? so i should run that program then?

 

Link to comment

Couldnt help but notice this thread as I have all WD drives currently.

EARX's

EARS's

EADS's

faex - parity

 

 

Should I be running wdidle on these? is that the recommened practice?

What kind of LCC should I be seeing per power on hours roughly?

 

small sample

 

eads

9 Power_On_Hours          0x0032   076   076   000    Old_age   Always       -       18092

193 Load_Cycle_Count        0x0032   189   189   000    Old_age   Always       -       34107

 

ears

193 Load_Cycle_Count        0x0032   199   199   000    Old_age   Always       -       5222

9 Power_On_Hours          0x0032   096   096   000    Old_age   Always       -       3158

 

earx

193 Load_Cycle_Count        0x0032   199   199   000    Old_age   Always       -       4205

9 Power_On_Hours          0x0032   099   099   000    Old_age   Always       -       1162

 

 

faex

193 Load_Cycle_Count        0x0032   200   200   000    Old_age   Always       -       179

9 Power_On_Hours          0x0032   099   099   000    Old_age   Always       -       1163

 

wow parity is low, thats cause its not a green drive and doesnt suffer this issue? so i should run that program then?

 

 

After WDIDLE you should see very little LLC increases, I get about ~150 a year with it disabled. Now that I have them set to 5 minutes (max you can set it without disabling it), that number will likely increase - but it sure beats the default of attemping to headpark every 8 seconds. I would get about 10,000/week before running WDIDLE3. Given your power_on_hours versus your LLC count... Doesn't seem like your drives suffer from it in a way that would cause damage. At 18092 hours on a EADS, the drive would of been well over a million LLCs in my server. I don't understand why it varies, I wonder if SATA cards have an affect on it.

 

I don't think you have to worry... you could run wdidle3 with /s300 and set them to 5 minutes if your paranoid. I simply can't recommend disabling it all together anymore. Your current LLC counts (according to Western Digital) aren't even near the max the drives are rated for. I was sitting at 150,000 LLCs after a month on some drives. They are rated at something like 1.2 million LLCs (dont quote me on that, I know its a very large number), and i've seen people with well over 1 million LLCs with the drive still working.

Link to comment
  • 4 weeks later...
  • 2 weeks later...

Because of high load/uload cycle on my WD20EARX,

 

I have changed timer with wdidle3 and made a mistake because I changed timer on all of three drives in my rig.

 

I also have WD500AAKS and WD640AALS.

 

Timer is now set on 300sec.(5min.) on all my drives and I wanted to do so just on WD20EARX.

 

Can anyone tell me what is default load/unload cycle time for WD500AAKS and WD640AALS, I want to roll back timer on default for those drives.

 

It is simple to check them, just type "wdidle3/R" and the information will show up.

I am trying to find those info. for a week, reading different forums but no luck.

Link to comment
I simply can't recommend disabling it all together anymore.

 

Out of curiosity why not?  Why not simply let unRAID handle things?  I disabled all of mine, but changed the default spin down time from 1 hour to 30 minutes.  I figure the heads can park when the drives spin down.  Is my logic flawed here?  Other than using a little more electricity I can't see any other drawback to this approach.

Link to comment
  • 2 months later...

My EZRX drives hit a LCC of 20.000 in ~69 days of active use. I consider this to be very high so i switched off head parking with intellipark (/d) all together. The first period i barely used the NAS, i think a lot of this was generated just in the last month. Also during the week my NAS is hardly used at all.  With this i'd easilly rack up close to 200.000 LCC count per year i would say...

 

I assume that parking still occurs after spinning down , shutting down, etc.

 

I'm curious what caused you to want to run WDIDLE in the first place.  Have you read any reports of these drives racking up excessive LCCs over short periods of time?  A quick google search didn't show me anything of interest.  I know the EARS drives had this problem, but I wouldn't assume that the EZRX drives do as well without seeing some proof.

From what i know, all WD Green drives with IntelliPark suffer from this "design decision".

 

EDIT:

Allthough i heard no strange sounds whatsoever, i also saw write to drop to 9-13mB/second. I've set my drives to S300 as well now. Write speed still seems lower with this, but acceptable. It doesn't make sense at all for this idle setting to affect performance negatively..but it seems it does. You'd expect the opposite..

Link to comment
  • 8 months later...

I am here to tell you this information about "do not disable intellipark with wdidle3 /d on WD30EZRX drives" is INCORRECT.  I just did this to 6 of these drives before installing in a new Synology DS1812+ box.  The key is to remove power from the drive and then re-test.  If you do not remove power from the drives after disabling Intellipark, they will not behave properly (as most of WD's other drives).  I tested the drive right after setting it without removing power from it and it is slow (about 30 MB/s transfer rate and a flat transfer across the entire disk space).  Once pulling power from the drive and re-testing.....it actually transfers data smoother and ever so slightly faster across the entire disk.  See my verification images using HD Tune Pro here (notice how the transfer rate is actually smoother on the drive with "wdidle3 /d" applied).  I did verify the drives have an 8 sec. park rate before modification.  Just do it!

 

My Synology box screams (saturates Gigabit Ethernet in both directions from my Win7 machine with Windows file copies in either direction).

03-October-2012_01-07_stock.png.871e86bc6d621bcd6f3f1210ff479c7e.png

03-October-2012_01-02_intellipark_disabled.png.9fa42d510317597bb041033e591eed22.png

Link to comment

I have done so after seeing that my LLC was climbing fast. I already had data on the drives (WD20EARS).

I used it on a few drives that had been used in a NAS without issue. I just took them out, ran WDIDLE3 under DOS and placed the disks back.No problem wharsoever.

 

good to know, thanks! :)

Link to comment
  • 4 months later...

I have to agree with the first post, disabling the wdidle3 on my wd10ezrx caused the drive to make a lot of strange noises, similar to the click of death.

Also, setting it to /s300 didn't solved my lcc problem, while setting it to /s60 worked. Now i get under 10 lcc x day, and the drive is not making strange noises.

Link to comment
  • 1 year later...

Hello everyone. I know this thread is really old but I have found this a few days ago when I was searching about WD20EZRX and IntelliPark.

 

I have buyed a WD20EZRX and run the wdidle3 file.

The bad thing is that the initial idletimer was set at 8 seconds, so the EZRX has this agressive parking issue as well (S.M.A.R.T. monitoring confirming, LLC permanently increasing when accesing the data on HDD).

 

The good thing is that the timer can be disabled as rfway said. I have also found this procedure and it works fine.

The only thing you need to do is to power off your computer, or remove the HDD from the power source after you disable the timer. If you don't power off the HDD after disabling the timer you will get bad performance and ugly seeking noises, something like the drive trying to park permanently when read / write.

 

I've disabled the timer for some days and everything work's OK. No LLC increase, no bad performance or bad noise issues.

The drive actually apeear to run a little smoother without this parking technology.

 

By disabling the timer you don't loosing data on HDD. I've done this with the HDD 40% loaded.

 

I just wanted to confirm that even on EZRX, the idle 3 mode can be completley deactivated without any issues, if you turn off the drive after disabling it.

Link to comment
  • 3 years later...

I buy a lot of refurbished PC's & some used, yet tough as nails WD RE4's, one of which was a 'GP' model, meaning 'Green Power'. Using the wdidle3 tool makes the RE4's with GP into a regular model, plus many of the drives I end up with (fortunately mostly WD's) has very high UCC stats, so I take no chance, run the tool on all. Some came to me with 8.5 to almost 10 years of powered on time usage, only one out of these had a low UCC (140 over 20K+ hours) & 40 of those were during my setting up Windows for the first time. 

 

So whomever had that one drive must have rarely shut down the PC (or most likely server), otherwise unless using the wdidle3 utility, would had have many, many more. Since I disabled with wdidle3, the UCC is consistent with my boot cycles. This is the leading cause of drive failure, like some other mechanical & many electronics (take modems, routers & even some brands of light bulbs, running constant produces fewer issues than power on/off cycles (or start/stop). 

 

I used the light bulb as one example, because out apartment's light bulbs has all been changed to quality corkscrew looking florescent ones, and all except one has been replaced more than once since initially installed. The only one that hasn't in in the combo kitchen/dining room & that light stays on 24/7, unless there's a power outage. Therefore, I don't see it as a fluke that we lucked out on the one bulb. Same with the previous router I installed, connected to a combo power strip/surge protector, and while in bed or gone, always flipped the switch to power down the router for security. The router was a well reviewed one & carried a 3 year warranty, yet didn't last a year with me turning on & off, it's replacement under RMA has lasted for almost 4 years & a recertified replacement. 

 

Came to find out, routers tends to run longer with fewer temperature changes, while rebooting to flush old code is OK & good for maintaining speed, in 60 seconds doesn't get cold, same goes for modems & likely HDD's also. Therefore, all except two of my WD drives has had the wdidle3 utility ran & haven't had any issues, no weird noises, all is good. The two that I didn't run the utility on, first because new & with a 5 year warranty, are my 2TB WD Gold's. Instead of running wdidle3, I downloaded the HIPM/DIPM utility shown below (usually used to assist with battery life on notebooks). There are two registry entries in the zip file to merge, enable or disable & I chose to merge enable, there'll be a prompt that (in short words) may be harmful, it's not. In regards to OS version, this works with any version of Windows on an AHCI equipped MB, there are older versions of this article in regards to Windows 7 & Vista, as well as 8.1. As with any downloaded file, be sure to scan with any installed security for your personal safety. 

 

https://www.tenforums.com/tutorials/72971-add-ahci-link-power-management-power-options-windows-10-a.html

 

What this does (after merge) is creates an added entry in the Advanced power plan, have to open Power Options as shown in snapshot in above link & click 'Change Plan Settings', then 'Change advanced power settings' and then, under Hard Disk, HIPM/DIPM will be the first item seen under 'Hard Disk' (brand doesn't matter). Directly under 'AHCI Link Power Management - HIPM/DIPM', there's 4-5 settings, just set to Active & then just below that, enter '0' & press Enter & click OK. Now reopen that same window & it should say 'Never' where the zero was entered, this has (near) the same effect as the wdidle3 utility & no need to risk voiding a warranty if one cannot figure out how to set wdidle3 back to default. BTW, I don't know how to reset to default myself, other than to lookup the drive & see the specs, or what the majority are posting on their forums for the out of the box timer. It may not be the same for every WD HDD, then again, it may be. 

 

Note that if one changes power plans, the file may need to be reinstalled & go through the steps again, as seen, very simple to do, a computer literate 12 year old could perform this & physically one's not digging into the registry, although years back, had to. Many Windows tech forums shows the same trick, am sure there's Linux & Mac specific tasks which does the same. 

 

So at least this gives both a safer option to wdidle3 & covers most all brands of drives and does hold down UCC values. If not, I'd know by now on the WD Gold drives I've had for roughly 6-8 months as of this date. 

 

Cat

Link to comment
  • 4 weeks later...
On 9/30/2011 at 12:17 AM, Rajahal said:

I see.  I would still like to see someone test the EZRX drives without running WDIDLE on them to see if they have the LCC problem.  I'm glad you aren't having any issues with your new drives, but there's no way to know if the drives would have been fine without the firmware modification unless someone tries it.  An expensive and risky test, I know, but it must be done...FOR SCIENCE!

 

I would run the tests myself, but my R&D money is constantly tied up in budget board testing...

 

Hey Rajahal

I read this whole thread just to figure out what to do with my WD Green WD20EZRX 2 TB drive which is a year old now. I have been using it on my Desktop PC for saving huge size games and Videos collection. I ran smartctl on the disk and it show :

Spin up time                4183

Start stop count           657

Power in hours            4496

Power cycle count        465

Load cycle count      21,898

 

I haven't changed the idle time using WDIDLE tool yet. 

 

How was your experiment with the same, did you eventually increased the Idle time to 300?

what would you recommend for me as I am not using it for a NAS or for server operations. But still, would love to see my HD to work for years to come. 

Any other utility if you would like to recommend to increase the life of the HDD and keep it maintained.

 

Thanks a lot. I hope you are still following the thread. 

 

Link to comment

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.
Note: Your post will require moderator approval before it will be visible.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Restore formatting

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.